Haute Couture from Israel. Designer Galia Lahav and Hamburg’s Past as a Place for Jewish Fashion Houses

Source Description

This photograph, showing the “Corina” wedding gown, is taken from the official
website of Israeli fashion designer
Galia Lahav (https://www.galialahav.com/bridal/couture/le-secret-royal/corina/).
The princess-like tiara, the corset with floral embellishments, and the
voluminous tulle skirt are staged in a fairy tale setting. The image is
representative for fashion company Galia
Lahav’s claim to combine luxury, elegance, and romance in its
bridal fashion. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why this photograph was
chosen as illustration for an entry in the local wedding guide “Kuchenbuchs
Hochzeitskatalog” [Kuchenbuch’s
Wedding Catalog] entitled “True Haute Couture in Hamburg” (pp. 48-51),
which reports on Galia Lahav’s bridal fashions
while pointing out that the first European flagship store of the Israeli company
was opened in 2016 at Mittelweg 21a in Hamburg.

Fashion designer
Galia Lahav

Galia Lahav is one of the internationally most
successful Tel
Aviv
designers of haute
couture. In the 1950s, while still a child, she immigrated to Israel with her family.
She subsequently trained as an arts and needlework teacher, and in 1985 she opened her first store for handmade lace
trimming – which was to be the beginning of her career in the fashion industry.
Today she specializes in wedding and evening gowns. Her studio located in the
center of Tel
Aviv employs a staff of more than 100. Lahav’s luxurious wedding gowns made of exquisite lace, tulle
and delicate embroidery are mainly worn by international celebrities and
European nobility. Her creations are known for their low-cut and artfully
decorated backs and flowing skirts. This aspect is also highlighted in this
photograph from Lahav’s website, which shows a
voluminous and richly embroidered tulle skirt. Despite their smooth silhouette
her dresses look dramatic and romantic. In order to achieve this effect, she
adopts stylistic elements from earlier periods in her collections. The “Corina”
design shown in the photograph features a slim-fitting waist that imitates the
“New Look” of the 1950s. In
combination with the elaborate trimming, embroidery and voluminous skirt the
wedding gown takes on a grand look, like a dress out of a fairy tale. On the
fashion label’s website the photograph is meant to catch the eye and thus
advertise for the fashion business. Young women are invited to identify with the
models shown wearing the wedding gowns and to imagine themselves wearing one of
Galia Lahav’s dresses on their wedding day
in front of a rapt audience in a grand hall. It is suggested to them that when
wearing the right dress they can feel “majestic” or like a “fairy tale princess”
– after all, “Corina” is part of a collection called “le secret royal” [the
royal secret], which certainly suggests such an association.

In 2016
Galia Lahav’s fashion house was invited to join
the Paris
association “Chambre Syndicale de la
Haute Couture.” This means that it now has the right
to refer to its creations as “couture” in
France as
well and thus distinguish itself from Prêt-à-porter [ready to wear] fashion, meaning industrially
produced clothing. It is an honor that highlights superior tailoring using
luxurious materials.

Tel Aviv as a
new fashion metropolis

Lahav’s international success is symbolic for
the rise of this young Israeli beach town to a fashion metropolis. Since the
1930s a growing number of
central European Jews settled in Tel Aviv, and in
addition to their language and culture they also brought their dress style with
them. Many of these immigrants had worked in the European garment industry and
went on to establish fashion businesses in their new home as well. Despite
difficult beginnings due to material shortages, Tel Aviv became an
export city for exclusive fashion items in the 1950s. By contrast, clothing produced for the
local market initially remained mostly of basic quality and was not very
fashionable. The great majority of Israeli women were unable to afford expensive
and extravagant clothes in times of national austerity measures. Meanwhile
Israeli clothing destined for export conformed to European and especially French
standards. Lola Ber, one of the first famous
Tel Aviv
designers, was strongly influenced by Christian Dior. Ber was born in 1910 in
Moravia, in
today’s Czech
Republic, and migrated to Palestine in 1939. She had received her professional training in
Europe
before she left, however. In her designs she combined perfect craftsmanship with
simple elegance and stylistic complexity.

Jewish fashion houses in Hamburg

Before the National Socialist regime there had been a number of Jewish garment
businesses and clothing stores in Hamburg. Among those
were the clothing stores Gebr.
Hirschfeld, Gebr.
Robinsohn, and the East India house
Heinrich Colm located at Neuer Wall, the ladies’ clothing
store owned by the Feldberg brothers, and the textile factory Rappolt & Sons on Mönckebergstraße. Hamburg’s Jewish
citizens were also known as manufacturers of raincoats, such as the coat factory of Hans Steinberg & Co. on Bellalliancestraße. Frank Bajohr’s research has
shown that more than 40 percent of all stores that specialized in ladies’ and
girls’ clothing had been owned by Jews. Jewish fashion boutiques had a long
tradition in Hamburg. In 1892
Leo Robinsohn opened the first clothing store
owned by his family at Bleichenbrücke. When the business moved to its new location at
Neuer Wall in 1901, it had more than 150 employees. Gebr. Hischfeld sold
high-end women’s clothing to its Hamburg clientele since
1893. Due to the rapid success of the Hirschfeld family business, further branches in
Bremen,
Lübeck,
Hannover and
Leipzig were
opened in the following years. Meanwhile the Gebr. Feldberg store was known all over
Germany as a
specialist for women’s coats.

Other German cities, and especially Berlin, had been home
to well-known Jewish fashion boutiques as well. The Nathan Israel
department store on Spandauer Straße, whose beginnings date back to 1815, was very popular, for instance. Hermann Gerson’s clothing
store had been purveyor to the Prussian Royal and Imperial court
since the middle of the 19th
century. Both houses also sold haute couture from Paris and
custom-designed ready-to-wear clothing based on French fashions. They also
invited their customers to “fashion teas” and larger fashion shows at which
well-known actresses modeled the designs.

In Hamburg Jewish
fashion boutiques presented the latest collections in much the same way. This
report from the local paper Hamburger
Nachrichten dated March 23,
1927 describes the course of a fashion show at Gebr.
Robinsohn. The author particularly points out the
elegant evening and wedding gowns, whose description is reminiscent of Galia Lahav’s designs: “Among the evening gowns there
were some precious pieces to be seen, which certainly will have stirred a
wistful craving in many a woman due to their splendor and grandeur. There was a
dress made of silver brocade with silver lace and embroidered with dusky pink
pearls that was pretty as a picture.” The show closed with a design for “a
wedding gown of white satin crepe silk with a veil and lace trim.”

Beginning in 1933 Jewish fashion store owners were
discriminated against and forced to either withdraw from or sell their
businesses because the National Socialists considered the fashion industry
particularly “infested with Jews” [verjudet].
Antisemitic
propaganda accused fashion made or sold by Jews of seducing “German women” and
called their clothes a “disgrace” and a “debasement of German taste.” On April 1, 1933, the day on which the NSDAP had called for a nationwide boycott
against Jewish stores, law and medical offices, members of the SA positioned themselves outside Jewish
clothing stores in Hamburg as well, trying to prevent customers from entering by
spreading antisemitic
slogans such as “Don’t buy from Jews” [Kauft nicht bei
Juden]. Non-Jews who showed themselves undeterred were
photographed and publicly shamed by having their names published on lists. In
June 1933 the “Working Group of German / Aryan
Manufacturers in the Garment Industry,” or AdefaArbeitsgemeinschaft
deutsch/arischer Fabrikanten der
Bekleidungsindustrie was founded. It set
itself the goal of ridding the German fashion industry of Jews. The companies
united in this group marked their clothing with a label that read
“Adefa – das Zeichen für Ware aus
arischer Hand” [Adefa – the label
for Aryan-made clothing]. Adefa systematically excluded Jewish fashion
businesses and threatened retailers with denunciation if they continued selling
clothes made by Jewish companies. During the pogrom of November 9, 1938 there was open violence
against Hamburg’s Jewish fashion stores. For example, SA and SS
units stormed the Gebr.
Robinsohn store, vandalized it deliberately and
plundered some of its wares. They threw mannequins and bolts of cloth into the
nearby Alster
canal. The damage done to the Gebr. Hirschfeld store by vandalism and
plundering amounted to 100,000 Reichsmark. By
1939 the forced “Aryanization” of Hamburg’s Jewish
businesses was complete, which put an end to the tradition of Jewish fashion
stores who had been renowned for their competence, quality and elegance. Many of
their former owners who were unable to emigrate were murdered in the systematic
extermination of European Jews. At the same time, the National Socialists often
took advantage of their tailoring skills in the ghettos and concentration camps
by having Jewish inmates sew custom-made clothing for high-ranking party
officials and their wives, for the military or for German companies.

Galia Lahav in Hamburg

Since the opening of Galia Lahav’s wedding gown
boutique a few years ago, there now is a Jewish fashion store in Hamburg again.
Lahav’s boutique at Mittelweg and the presentation of new
designs in wedding catalogs and occasionally at fashion shows such as the one
held for the store opening pick up on the tradition of Hamburg’s Jewish
fashion stores, and they serve to remind us of a part of the rich cultural
heritage destroyed by the National Socialists. However, Lahav herself does not make this connection, and her Hamburg flagship store
even expressly rejects this notion.

On the one hand, this image can be interpreted in a German-Jewish context. It
documents the important economic and cultural role the Jewish population once
played in the fashion industry in both Hamburg and Germany. In the context
of German-Israeli relations, it also illustrates the history of Jewish
immigrants to Israel. Knowing how to use their creative talents in their new
home as well, they managed to establish an internationally successful branch of
the fashion industry.

Select Bibliography

Selected English Titles

Mila Ganeva, Women in Weimar Fashion. Discourses and
Displays in German Culture, 1918-1933, Rochester 2008.Irene Guenther, The Destruction of a Culture and
an Industry, in: Roberta S. Kremer, Broken Threads. The Destruction of the
Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria, Oxford et al. 2007,
pp. 76-97.Anat Helman, Young Tel Aviv. A Tale of Two Cities,
Hanover et al. 2010.Anat Helman, A Coat of Many Colors. Dress Culture in
the Young State of Israel, Boston 2011.Ingrid Loschek, Contributions of Jewish Fashion
Designers in Berlin, in: Roberta S. Kremer, Broken Threads. The Destruction
of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria, Oxford et al. 2007, pp. 48-75.

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About the Author

Julie Grimmeisen, Dr., is the academic director at the Consulate General of the State of Israel in Munich. She gained her PhD at the Chair for Jewish History and Culture at LMU Munich.
In 2017, the publishing house Wallstein published her dissertation “Pioneers and Beauty Queens. Female Role Models in Israel. 1948 to 1967.“

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.